How it all came together for Heat: Shades of 2006

June 24, 2012|By Ira Winderman, South Florida Sun Sentinel

MIAMI — There is a moment during every championship run when it changes, when the light goes on, when it becomes clear that a title is more than an abstract, more than a possibility, when a confidence even greater than momentum is gained.

In 2006, after the Miami Heat secured their first championship, as he marinated in the moment, Ron Rothstein, then and now a championship assistant coach, had no trouble defining that moment.

"It was when we swept New Jersey," Rothstein said after that championship run.

The Heat actually didn't sweep that series, instead pummeled by the Nets in the opener of those 2006 Eastern Conference semifinals at home, before taking the next four games.

"I didn't know of three other better players than Vince Carter, Richard Jefferson and Jason Kidd that we'd have to beat.

"We felt better after that. That's when it turned."

To a degree, that's when it turned again, in the second round of this title run that produced Thursday euphoria and extended elation in the days since.

In 2006, the regular season was one more of meandering than marauding, the 52-30 record good enough only for second-best in the Eastern Conference, just as the 46-20 record proved this time around.

In 2006, the Chicago Bulls were the first-round opponent, a legacy rival on so many levels. This season, the epic playoff rivalry with the New York Knicks was renewed in the opening round.

Then came the second round, one that would define, perhaps change, the equation.

In 2006, there was the Nets series cited by Rothstein.

This season, it was a second-round series against Indiana Pacers, one that began with the loss of forward Chris Bosh in the first half of the first game of the series, a lower-abdominal strain that would sidelined him for more than three weeks.

And if that 100-88 May 8, 2006 loss to the Nets provided the wakeup call for the 2006 championship run, then what happened May 17 this season at Bankers Life Fieldhouse changed everything this time around.

The Heat were obliterated 94-75 by the Pacers. Guard Dwyane Wade and coach Erik Spoelstra got into a heated tiff on the bench. For the first time since falling in the 2011 NBA Finals to the Dallas Mavericks, the Heat found themselves at a playoff deficit, down 2-1 to the Pacers.

Yet during the ensuing two days off, there was an exhale, perhaps a necessary exhale after a lockout-compacted grinder of a season that would feature four or five games a week.

Wade went to nearby Bloomington to connect to his roots, meeting with Tom Crean, his college coach who had mentored him at Marquette and now is leading a revival at Indiana.

Owner Micky Arison went to see "The Dictator," spirits raised by the idiocy of Sasha Baron Cohen, his BlackBerry, he said, silenced for the day.

The Heat would win the next game in Indiana. And the game after that. And the series clincher back in Indiana after that.

To forward Shane Battier, it was the turning point. Adversity faced; adversity conquered.

A week later, as similar concern was raised in the Eastern Conference finals against the Boston Celtics, Heat President Pat Riley, a man who weeks later would speak of "jumping out of my skin" at various points during this championship run, sat calmly on the Heat bench hours before tipoff at TD Garden.

"What do you think?" he was asked, a conversation that was private at the moment, but only because of the uncertainty of the moment.

"I feel good," he said, even as his team would fall to a 3-2 deficit in that best-of-seven series.

"Why?"

"Because I like the look of this team. We'll be fine."

He smiled, sat back, watched players continue their warmups, as if he knew what would follow.

Because that's what happens when it comes together.

In 2006, after the Heat had lost the first two games of the Finals in Dallas, Riley, then coach, wrote "June 20" on the team's whiteboard. It was the first possible date the Heat, in Game 6, could win the championship.

They did.

This year, on the team flight back from Oklahoma City in the early morning hours on June 15, after the Heat had escaped with a 100-96 victory over the Thunder at the collegiate fieldhouse-turned-NBA-venue that is Chesapeake Energy Arena, Wade turned to a staffer on the team flight back to Miami and said, "We're going to win these next three, aren't we? I can feel it."

He did.

They did.

And then the confetti guns exploded.

Hours later, on a practice court turned into party stage, as Micky Arison soaked up the moment, intoxicated by the moment, he was still marveling at the thoroughness of Thursday's closing act.

"Do you believe that?" he said in more statement than question. "Do you believe what we did?"

The score still read 121-106 on the scoreboard one story below at AmericanAirlines Arena. But it might as well have read 95-92, the closing score of the Heat's 2006 championship at Dallas' American Airlines Center.